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I haven't officially spoken in public about that issue, but I don't think it's a secret that Carlos [López-Cantera] has been a good friend of mine for many years. I respect him. I think he has done a great job as a state representative, as property appraiser in South Florida, and he's doing so now as lieutenant governor of Florida, and I think he would be a great senator, but I don't have an announcement for you today.
40 percent of people who come to visit America on a visa overstay their visa and we have no idea where they are. On 9/11, at least 2 of the hijackers were here on visa. They were traveling back and forth to the Middle East. And we really had no idea where they were or what they were doing. And they were overstaying their visa. So there are problems I think in the immigration system that need to be fixed for our safety.
The real debate is we've had an activist court, and the American people don't want an activist court. And the real fear from those who might oppose Samuel Alito is that he'll bring the court back within a realm where the American people might want us to be with a Supreme Court; one that interprets the law, equal justice under the law, but not advancing without us advancing, the legislative body advancing, ahead of him.
You can be a victim of a crime and not exercise great judgment. And when women have been sexually assaulted, they feel like they have to have been perfect in order to have anybody believe them. They think nobody will believe them unless a stranger jumped out from behind a bush with a knife - not that they got too drunk and that a guy they thought they knew, you know, took advantage of them in a physical, assaultive way.
We've got oligarchs. There are certain people that benefit in the Russian sphere if you will. The oligarchs who basically feed Putin, they've got to be hurt without hurting the people. The people are hurting bad enough in Russia, and they're very skeptical of what's going on and all of the corruption goes on in Russia. Russia is not our ally. Russia is not our friend. And to treat Putin as an ally and a friend is wrong.
"For 46 years, we were engaged in a worldwide battle against communism". "During that time, there were countless heroes, who served in our nation's Armed Forces and played a critical role in America's triumph. These men and women, who sacrificed so much for so many, deserve to be awarded the Cold War Service Medal in recognized of their faithful service to their country and tireless defense of freedom around the world."
If we look at it more from a philosophical standpoint, these foundations of atheism and secular humanism believe that you are your own God. That leads us to something that unfortunately has crept into many churches across America, and it is what I call the Social Gospel. The social gospel, that could creep into something that is called Liberation Theology, which is a mixture of leftist, pseudo-Christianity with Marxism.
When the media worries about what Hillary’s hair looks like or what my hair looks like, that’s a real problem. We have millions of people who are struggling to keep their heads above water, who want to know what candidates can do to improve their lives, and the media will very often spend more time worrying about hair than the fact that we’re the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people.
The question's whether or not there's an American interest in the Civil War [in Syria]. The question is whether or not a military strike on [Bashar] Assad will cause him to be encouraged to use more weapons or discouraged. It's easy enough to say - and the president [Barack Obama] says though this will teach him a lesson - but his military strike is intended not to target him individually, not to bring about regime change.
Jobs is the one area where I think Donald Trump is striking a chord that really resonates and should resonate. Both parties need to do a better job of rejecting poorly negotiated trade agreements. And I would put the president's TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, in that category. We have lost thousands of manufacturing jobs just in the state of Maine alone, and that resonates with people, and understandably so.
I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism. I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time.
We need to send a message to Vladimir Putin through stronger sanctions. We need him to understand that the sanctions that we put in place can have a significant impact on his economy that we need to deter further action from him. And understand who he is, former KGB colonel, he's a bully, and bullies only understand when we punch them in the nose but we need to do that economically. That is our strongest move at this point.
I'd like something that faces reality. We have 12 million people in this country that are undocumented - that's a reality. It's not going to be like they're all going to leave. One of the reasons I'm holding this hearing in the morning is to hear from somebody who actually understands what's involved here - Janet Napolitano - and I hope that from what she says and what we hear from her, we can start building some consensus.
From a policy point of view, I don't think it's the right approach. I don't like the idea of having millions of people here for their entire life without being able to assimilate into America...From a political point of view, we've got 55 Democrats sent and a 72 percent support for a path to citizenship. It's just not practical to think we'll be able to pass any bill in the United States Senate without a path to citizenship.
We`ve got to stand with those people who are being attacked today, but at the same time, it`s not good enough to say that racism and xenophobia is bad. We`ve got to reach those people today who are so angry, who are so hateful and say, yes, you have a right to be angry, don`t take it out on the Muslims. Work with us to create an agenda and political movement that will make your life better, not just other people`s life worse.
The basic issue of an American society which is fair, which is providing opportunity for all, is nowadays being replaced by the correct perception that we're living in a rigged economy - where it doesn't matter how hard you worked, the result will be all the income goes to the people at the very top. It's leading to a lot of frustration and anger, and people want some fundamental changes to the way we do economics and growth.
You know a Senate race is obviously a much smaller deal than a presidential race. What I think makes a very hard job considerably easier when you're going to debate is if you have reminded yourself - or somebody has reminded you during the course of your campaign - that consistency is enormously important. That people don't want to hear you say one thing in one part of the state and another thing in another part of the state.
Clearly we must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack, but we can and must do so in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society. We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, everyplace we go.
The focus, to my mind, is to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States. I think by temperament he is unqualified to be president. I think his views - you have a guy who's running for president who rejects science, doesn't even believe climate change is real, let alone wants to do something about it, wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top two-tenths of one percent.
I went back to a small town in Poland where my dad grew up. It was a very traumatic experience for me as a young man to know that my father's family were killed by Nazis, killed by Hitler. And that left, you know, if not intellectually, at least an emotional part of me which said, God, we have got to do everything we can to end this kind of horrific racism or anti-Semitism. And I have spent much of my life trying to fight that.
We live in a gender-biased world. I know we have a lot. But I do know that this history we're making, when Hillary Clinton will accept the nomination, I think it's going to go good steps in helping this country heal from its past and grow towards its future that's more inclusive, more accepting and more realizing that every American has value and that discrimination has no place in politics, in the workplace or anywhere at all.
I think our message,the Clinton campaign was very strong. Remember, this is their fourth campaign in South Carolina. Two for Bill Clinton. Two for Hillary Clinton. They had it well organized. They did well. And Icongratulate them. We came into that state at something like 7 or 8 percent in the polls. It was a tough road for us to hoe. But I want to thank all of our supporters, the members of the South Carolina state legislature.
A lot of times, candidates for office, especially incumbents, seem to get drawn into their opponents' arguments, and fighting on their turf, because you want to defend yourself. That's wrong. Fight on your own turf. Make them come to you. Make them explain why they don't agree with your position. I think that a lot of times, too many liberals, progressives, lose because they're afraid to really stand up for what they believe in.
For decades we have been living lives of abundance, with little regard for our natural resources or global health. But we are now facing hard choices in our energy policy. Future generations - my children and grandchildren, along with yours - will have to live with the decisions we make today. And so it is time for us to make some tough and - hopefully - smart choices regarding our energy use and production before it is too late.
The combination of the growth of these digital technologies, the ability of the government to conjure up these secret interpretations, plus a very unusual and novel court make for this ever-expanding surveillance state. We so treasure our freedoms; we will regret it if our generation doesn't use this unique time to reform the surveillance laws and make it clear that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We can do both.
I had the privilege and the honor of chairing the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. And it is interesting to me, you know, Republicans give a lot of speeches about how much they love veterans. I work with the American Legion, the VFW, the DAV, the Vietnam Vets, and virtually every veterans organization to put together the most comprehensive piece of the veterans legislation in the modern history of America. That's what I did.
We know the Russians did everything they could to be involved in our campaign. We know that what they're doing around the world right now, whether it be in France or other parts of the world. They'll do anything they can to disrupt any type of a freedom, if you will, or a democracy, or an involvement where there's an orderly transfer of power. That's not for them. They're going to do what they can. We have to make sure we stop it.
Hillary Clinton has a long track record of service in public life. And you can look at that. I tell the story about her being first lady of the United States, when the effort to get Hillary Clinton done failed, and that was a tough, tough, bitter loss, but then it tested her as a leader. And she worked together with Democrats and Republicans to get health insurance for eight million low-income American children in the CHIP program.
I think, when the African-American community understands my record on criminal justice, my record on economics, the agenda we're bringing forth, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, dealing with the fact that we have more people in jail, shamefully, than any other country on Earth, that I am against the death penalty, Secretary Clinton is not, I think, as people become familiar with my ideas, we are going to do better and better.
Now, why would my supporters be supporting somebody who doesn't want to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a starvation wage, doesn't want to do that. Why would anybody that supports me support a candidate like Trump who wants to throw millions and millions of people off of health insurance? We need to guarantee health care to all people as a right, not throw millions of people off health insurance as Trump wants to do.
High-speed trains in Japan can now reach 375 mph - twice as fast as any public transit train in the United States. America's railroads were once the envy of the world. Today they are in disrepair and we are falling further and further behind the rest of the world. We need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, including rail. When we do that we not only make our country more productive and efficient, we create millions of new jobs.
I do not think it is any benefit for artists or fans to have all the new, wide distribution channels in the online world controlled by those who have controlled the old, narrower ones, .. This is especially true if they achieve that control by leveraging their dominance in content or conduit space in an anticompetitive way to control the new, independent music services that are attempting to enhance the consumer's experience of music.
For Democrats to win, they're going to have to address the needs of working people. They're going to have to address the needs of the middle class. And that means standing up to Wall Street, standing up to the greed of corporate America. Even now and then, standing up to the media. And that means having a candidate who can excite working families, excite young people, bring them into the political process, create a large voter turnout.
Some urge we do nothing because we can't be certain how bad the (climate) problem might become or they presume the worst effects are most likely to occur in our grandchildren's lifetime. I'm a proud conservative, and I reject that kind of live-for-today, 'me generation,' attitude. It is unworthy of us and incompatible with our reputation as visionaries and problem solvers. Americans have never feared change. We make change work for us.
The classic example I've used - I'm sure you've heard me say it before - was Mark Begich in Alaska who was here for a full six years and never had a roll call vote on an amendment on the floor of the Senate, which Dan Sullivan tells me he used on virtually a daily basis. So the notion that protecting all of your members from votes is a good idea politically, I think, has been pretty much disproved by the recent [Barack Obama] election.
When John Kennedy was assassinated I was twenty-three, a stockbroker on Wall Street and married, and I never ever thought that politics would be anything that I would be a part of. But I realized that I had to get involved. Then, when Martin Luther King was assassinated and the Vietnam War was raging, I felt that my world was falling apart. I had these two beautiful children - three and one - and I just said, "I have to make it better."
I still remember how upset I was in the aftermath of President Obama's election, where people in Republican leadership didn't say that, "Hey, I want to focus on the issues and values of our country," but, "My number one goal is to see that Barack Obama is not a two term president." That to me is outrageous. I would never do that. My number one goal is to fight to protect poor people, ethnic and religious minorities, working class folks.
As a kid who failed out of high school as a freshman, I know firsthand and personally that sense of hopelessness and just being - drifting in the wrong direction, having really no hope. And being able to harness that frustration was incredibly valuable in my life. That's one of the reasons I focus so consistently on the foundation of education, because it helps to eviscerate those things that - unemployment, high jobless rates, poverty.
Now all of the ideas that I'm talking about, they are not radical ideas. Making public colleges and universities tuition free, that exists in countries all over the world, used to exist in the United States. Rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and creating 13 million jobs by doing away with tax loopholes that large corporations now enjoy by putting their money into the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. That is not a radical idea.
I had not been involved in any way in planning the event in Mobile. My staff maybe, had really been contacted, but I had never talked to Donald Trump about him coming to Mobile, and I decided - I had something else to do but it became so clear that it was going to be such a big event that I should be there. And he had already adopted my immigration views, in large part, and he was saying things I thought were valuable, about immigration.
We have seen that [Zika virus] has caused, and is causing, a whole series of problems for pregnant women and for their unborn children, and we are seeing that it is transmitted by mosquitos, and mosquitos are a serious matter during the summer in Florida. So we are very worried about those funds not being available. There is $500 million dollars available from the Ebola money that was not used. I think it is going to be used immediately.
Voters decided otherwise [on me as a president candidate] and I will focus on my work here in the Senate because I have nine months left. And after that, later, as a private citizen, I will continue looking for a way to contribute to the cause of political conservatism to help our state and our country and the issues that interest me. But I really don't want to be nor do I think that I will be invited to be any candidate's vice president.
When Donald Trump's term is over, I think, the debasing of the American nation - the constant non-truth-telling, the name-calling - the debasement of our nation will be what he will be remembered most for. And that's regretful, and it affects young people. We have young people who for the fist time are watching a President stating absolute non-truths, non-stop, personalizing things in the way that he does. And it's very sad for our nation.
I do not believe that marijuana is a gateway drug, and having been a mayor trying to keep my community safe, if there was any drug that was driving violence, more than marijuana, it was alcohol which is legal. And so I just don't think this is a gateway drug. And by the way, if you regulate it you're actually going to overcome a lot of problems with people having to go to the streets to buy their drug. You don't know how dangerous that is.
Just by coincidence, Senator Teddy Kennedy and I, in the last couple of days, after several months of negotiations, have reached an agreement for an immigration proposal that we will be putting out next week, ... our proposal is along the lines of make them pay a fine of a couple thousand dollars, make them work for three years, and after three years they can get in the back of the line for a green card and then eventually become citizens.
Ted Cruz said he wanted to find a compromise. Ted Cruz said he wanted to bring 11 million people out of the shadows. Ted Cruz said that he wanted immigration reform to pass. Here's the bottom line. I tried to solve a very difficult issue, and we tried to produce the best and most conservative bill possible in a Senate controlled by Harry Reid at the time, and then send it over to the House and have them, conservatives, make it even better.
I looked at the pilgrims coming to America. In their first year, they decided to try a communist experiment. And the first year of the pilgrims, they established this socialistic concept: 'Well, we have all this land before us - let us all work it together.' Oh, how wonderful it sounded. 'Let us all work it together, and we will share in the produce of the land.' They almost starved to death! Almost half of them died, that very first year.
The government's collection authority, under the Patriot Act, is basically limitless. They can get the medical records and financial records, gun purchase records. And it also becomes part of another important issue that relates to the FISA court and the rest of the debate. It almost becomes a secret law, like there are two Patriot Acts. The one you read on the laptop essentially leads you to believe that there's some connection to terror .
Some of the morays have held on. When I was in school, I remember asking the question, "Why is it that whenever I walk into a fraternity there's alcohol everywhere and there's no alcohol in a sorority? Why is it that sororities won't allow alcohol, but fraternities do? What is that?" You know, nobody had a really good answer, and that's kind of held on. It's one of the issues that's being examined now - the role of alcohol in sexual assault.
After a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, the federal government has a profound obligation to help those in need, .. Right now, the victims of Hurricane Katrina need our help. Entire communities have been destroyed. Families have been torn apart. Many are still missing. Tens of thousands remain homeless. As the recovery proceeds, we in the Senate pledge to do everything in our power to help rebuild the shattered lives across the Gulf Coast.